>S 1039 
,fl5 F7 
1874 
2opy 1 





Class_ 

J\S FT 



Book. 



n^ 



FRESH LEAVES. 



JrF v 






CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Words of the Sea 151 

To I. A 153 

The Winged Victory. 156 

An August Sunrise 160 

The Record 163 

Out of the Shadow 165 

Pompeii . 169 

The Whip of the Sky 170 

The Polaris 173 

Diana of Gabii 176 

The Bowling Green, New York 178 

The Blackberry-Boy 181 

Ashes 183 

To-morrow 186 

Places • 189 

Sea-Tangle 192 

Penekese 194 

Two Characters 197 

An English Sunday in the Country 201 

An October Day 204 

The Boston Booby-Hut 207 



THE WORDS OF THE SEA. 

The sea has many things to say, 

And says them as we wish them said : 

To the boy pausing in his play, 

It cries, "Be quick, fetch line and lead." 

To the wan lover it displays 

Its moon-path o'er the waters white, 

And in each breaking crest it says, 
" Hope on, I share in your delight." 

To the worn man whose restless soul 
Has found no haven on life's sea, 

It whispers, " Nor is this our goal : 
We rest but in eternity." 

To the proud child of fostering ease, 
Whose chariot rolls beside its shore, 

A voice invites to ride the seas, 

And manhood learn, unlearned before. 



152 FRESH LEAVES. 

To the white watcher by the tomb, 

Whose heart has fled from him to heaven, 

Its phosphor finger past the gloom 
Points to a promise faith has given. 

To death it shouts, " Arise and live ! " 

In organ tones for evermore, 
Wave after wave, one countless hive 

Falls, breaks, and thunders on the shore. 



TO I. A. 153 



TO I. A. 

As when with patient feet we scale 
In far-off lands a mountain's crest, 
And snatch as token from its breast 
Some modest flower with petals pale ; 

When by our hearth-stone we shall sit, 
That flower shall on its faded stem 
Bear memories of Jerusalem 
Or Arno as we gaze on it ; 

So thou whom, knowing, I knew not, 
Nor, seeing, saw thee as thou art, 
Whose leaves could hide thy tender heart, 
Fixed in thy native garden-plot : 

Here, where a foreign air surrounds 
With strangeness all the glowing streets, 
And, even in smiling eyes, one meets 
An unfamiliar look which wounds ; 



154 FRESH LEAVES. 

Where the heart cries as does a child 
Lost in some woodland's tangled dells, 
And thinks it hears the village bells 
Call home across the branches wild, — 

Thy voice, thine eye, recall the dear 
Remembered faces far away ; 
And breathing round thee is the play 
Of airs from home which find us here. 

And Sympathy its golden gate 
Flings wide, which leads me on to thee ; 
And throned, past guarding pride, I see 
Thy spirit in its roj^al state. 

The steady fire of conscience clear, 
Star-like above our blinding night, 
Lifts high its unremitting light, 
And shows us that the heavens are near. 

The grace which fashions from a glance 
Delight, and grazing with its wings, 
Bird-like, the surfaces of things, 
Can make a tov of circumstance. 



TO I. A. 155 

The mirth, which with its thread of gold 
Makes bright the sombre web of life, 
And that rose-perfectness of wife 
Which the girl's bud could not unfold. 

And, like a perfume rising there, 
From the heart's altar to the skies ; 
While unseen lips chant litanies, 
The voiceless atmosphere of prayer. 



*5 6 FRESH LEAVES. 



THE WINGED VICTORY. 

" Animula, vagula, blandula." — Hadrian. 



[Upon the rocky platform at Athens from which rises the Parthenon, but at the 
extremity overlooking Salamis, is the small temple of the Wingless Victory. It consists 
but of a little enclosure, no larger than a common room. In its centre stood the statue 
of Victory, made wingless to imply that it never would desert Athens. Around it, on 
the walls, was a belt of winged Victories in high relief. The wingless Victory was per- 
sonal to Athens ; but the Victories with wings we may suppose the conquests in art, 
poetry, and philosophy, which from Athens flew everywhere, bearing the seeds of the 
world's culture.] 



I. 

Think ye the grave shall truth imprison? 
Behold ! the Lord of life is risen. 
Why kneel ye there beside that grave, 
Empty of him who came to save? 
Why worship where the light is gone, 
Nor know behind you mounts the dawn? 
The living flower from heaven which fell 
Ye wear, an iron manacle. 
Salute not the dead truth which lies 
Lost in the cloudy centuries : 
Its withering chrysalis is there, 
But Psyche winged exults in air. 



THE WINGED VICTORY. 157 

O'er Horeb now the sky is mute ; 
On Sinai burns no prophet's foot ; 
Its flameless bush beholds the God 
Pass on, and voiceless leave its sod. 
Pallas, her choral maidens gone, 
Weeps o'er her crumbling Parthenon ; 
The flame which shaped each Pyramid 
The desert waste of years has hid : 
It lies a silent, smouldered brand, 
Cold in its winding-sheet of sand. 



11. 

Why cower ye there by outworn creeds? 

Why clothe your soul in faded weeds ? 

Up ! where the morning land displays 

Its splendors through the auroral haze, 

And quivers in its jewelled fire. 

The city of the world's desire. 

There our sky brethren build our hope, 

And cast the future's horoscope ; 

There broods the hour which promises 

Fulfilment to the eye which sees 

The climbing birthday of the skies, — 



158 FRESH LEAVES. 

Of larger love and clearer sight, 
And earth made spiritually bright, 
Where shining ones unsoiled shall tend 
Our steps, and with our being blend ; 
And that loved day by saints foreseen 
Towards us out of heaven shall lean. 



in. 

The new birth, and the passing hour 

Of false and transitory power, 

The coming and the dying thought, 

On looms unseen by love are wrought. 

The hand that wrote the words of fate 

On walls of Babylon the great 

Yet points in palaces of kings 

The secret influence of things, 

Till dreams by fond ambition nursed 

Sleep unfulfilled at Chiselhurst. 

Still where the weird monitions sound, 

The gaping soothsayers surround, 

Forbidding as did France's king 

The miracle's accomplishing. 



THE WINGED VICTORY. 1 59 

IV. 

Here, when man's vision bursts in flower, 
Stoops the swift Proteus of the hour : 
Its tears have fed, its fingers twine, 
The tendrils of the plant divine ; 
Its breath shall bear the winged seeds 
Through other worlds and future creeds. 
In our free West, where Truth can rise 
Unchallenged to the welcoming skies, 
It midway meets the succoring host 
Come glancing from the immortal coast, 
Their jubilee in triumph rings, 
Its guard a myriad shadowy wings ; 
And bridal peals the spirit hears 
Mix with the music of the spheres. 



160 FKESH LEAVES. 



AN AUGUST SUNRISE. 

As waits with worshipping awe a Parsee, facing 

The eastern skies, 
Till his god come ; so stand I, mute and gazing, 

To watch him rise. 

Ah ! see upon the dim horizon's margent 

A pearly glow, 
Where, fused with night, a kindling faint and argent 

Soars from below. 

It quickens, widens, and ascending ever, 

Sends javelins on ; 
And plants on ebon mount and dusky river 

Its gonfalon. 

A shining scimetar is drawn in heaven : 

On it the word 
In mystic characters of fire engraven : 

"Allah the Lord!" 



AN AUGUST SUNRISE. l6l 

On some far beach long rosy surges, breaking, 

Bear sails of gold, 
Which dip and fly, their airy streamers shaking, 

Fold after fold. 

Not Golgos' nor Idalium's buried beaker, 

Irised by time, 
Displays such hues as tint with magic liquor 

Yon cup sublime. 

The foam of falls, the light in eyes when dying, 

The sheen of shells, 
Aurora's footprint shall surpass, defying 

All lustre else. 

With burnished rods of gold, day's heralds clearing, 

And making room, 
Proclaim to earth and heaven his swift appearing, 

Whose loss is doom. 

They hang their banderoles on azure highlands 

And cloudy knolls ; 
While a dim music thrills the attentive silence, 

As on it rolls. 



1 62 FRESH LEAVES. 

The small birds hear it, and in slumbrous dreaming 

Begin to sing, 
Till Nature feels the pulsing glory streaming 

Through every thing. 

The vassal earth stirs ; and the gentle breezes, 

Which are its breath, 
Lift from its heart the stupor that releases 

From night-long death. 

Kneel ye in homage ; swing your censers, flowers ! 

In welcoming, 
To him who is your sovereign and ours ; 

For, lo ! the King ! 



THE RECORD. 1 63 



THE RECORD. 

At Cambridge, in its ancient university, 
And at umbrageous Amherst, you may find 
Slabs marked with footsteps in extreme diversity, 
Prints which Earth's caravans have left behind. 

They are the pages of our planet's history, 
Older than records writ by human pen, 
Linked to our life by life's recorded mystery, 
And lost in night at last beyond our ken. 

All are obscurely grand ; with them coeval 
We seem, in fancy, to behold the seas 
Retire before the smoking land's upheaval, 
And earth for man made fit by slow degrees. 

Vast shapes, the warders of those days chaotic : 
Batrachian monsters wallowing in the slime 
Of rivers, — life's rude sketches embryotic, 
And hints of forms to be advanced by time. 



164 FRESH LEAVES. 

Among them is the record of an hour, 
One minute of it, — awfullest of things, — 
Where passed along the plastic ooze a shower, 
Sealing in sandstone all its dimpling rings. 

Time faints in reckoning what hour, what minute, 
Near its own birth-time, fell from heaven that rain : 
'Tis as if yesterday it fell ; and in it 
We may read much to make Heaven's meaning 
plain. 

Each passing moment stamps its fixed impression 
Somewhere, with meaning for our human lives, — 
Somewhere, each act, each thought, makes its 

confession : 
Nothing is lost, the smallest thing survives. 

God's angels photograph the sigh of feeling, 
The blush of guilt, a blessing or a ban 
For the hereafter, when, to all revealing, 
In light shall show the hidden life of man. 

If matter live so locked in stone for ever, 
Much more shall soul impress its fleeting shower, 
And gleam of sunshine, till from Death's cold river 
Shall rise immortal tokens of each hour. 



OUT OF THE SHADOW. 1 65 



OUT OF THE SHADOW. 

"Come, wife, 'tis June. I hear the call 

The wrinkled world renewing, 

Though old ourselves, Love's festival 

To celebrate is suing. 

Come, take thy hat. I long to feel 

The blithe air round us blowing : 

Under the ice of age will steal 

The pulse through all things flowing." 

They went, where Memory's hidden clew 
Drew them, beyond the village, 
Under the heaven's delightful blue, 
Remote from farm and tillage ; 
Where the heart bade them, up the hill 
They wandered, without choosing, 
Silent, and hand in hand, and still 
Old Junes with new confusing. 



1 66 FRESH LEAVES. 

The little clouds, like faces, smiled 

Their vernal salutation, 

And breathed from clustering flowers wild 

The season's invitation. 

The field-lark rippled overhead 

Its song to come and follow ; 

And flakes of rose the orchards shed 

Past every sunny hollow. 

Only the cat-bird, cynic sage ! 
Sour in his leaved seclusion, 
Protests, as from a hermitage, 
Against sweet June's delusion. 
So like him, grim in black, and sour, 
Severe, dyspeptic preachers 
Protest with now decreasing power 
Against our cheerful Beechers. 

" This is the place ; the gate now shut, 

As when, in childhood's hours, 

I shook this gummy butternut, 

Till half its nuts were ours. 

How stained your hands ! Our prize we stored 

In mother's closet sunny, 



OUT OF THE SHADOW. 167 

All winter, then devoured our hoard, 
With sauce unbought by money." 

They paused to gaze ; and then his hand 
Pointed where, in the meadow, 
Like triple emerald fountains, stand 
Three elms, in light and shadow ; 
A shy path led the way to them. 
In dimpled glints, that shine and sing, 
Leaped, under branches of each elm, 
A brown brook, frolicking. 

They sat themselves at that elm's root, 
Just where the eddy glances : 
Speechless, their thought in fond pursuit 
Of dear youth's first romances. 
A rose-bush stained the quivering blue : 
He took two buds, and sharing 
Between them these, above them flew 
A joy past words declaring. 

" 'Twas here you gave me leave to love ; 
Our pledge, two rose-buds, dearest. 
Is this the one? by Heaven above 
Thou still sixteen appearest ! " 



1 68 FRESH LEAVES. 

They rose to go, and silently- 
Returned, through twilight holy. 
And Love, in wrinkled hands, could see 
Two rose-buds drooping lowly. 



POMPEII. 169 



POMPEII. 

The silence there was what most haunted me. 
Long, speechless streets, whose stepping-stones in- 
vite 
Feet which shall never come ; to left and right 
Gay colonnades and courts, — beyond, the glee, 
Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea. 
On roofless homes and waiting streets, the light 
Lies with a pathos sorrowfuller than night. 
Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death 
Wedded, and with her wand restores the Life. 
The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath 
The open shops, and all the tropic strife 
Of voices, Roman, Greek, Barbarian, mix. The 

wreath 
Indolent hangs on far Vesuvius' crest ; 
And over all, the glowing town and guiltless sea, 
sweet rest. 



17° FRESH LEAVES. 



THE WHIP OF THE SKY. 

Weary with travel, charmed with home, 
The youth salutes New England's air ; 
Nor notes, within the azure dome, 
A vigilant, menacing figure there, 
Whose thonged hand swings 
A whip which sings : 
" Step, step, step," sings the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry up, move along, you can if you try ! " 

Remembering Como's languid side, 

Where, pulsing from the citron deep, 
The nightingale's aerial tide 

Floats through the day, repose and sleep, 
Reclined in groves, 
A voice reproves. 
"Step, step, step," cracks the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry up, jump along, rest when you die ! " 



THE WHIP OF THE SKY. 171 

Slave of electric will, which strips 

From him the bliss of easeful hours ; 
And bids, as from a tyrant's lips, 
Rest, quiet, fly, as useless flowers, 
He wrings his heart 
To make him smart. 
"Step, step, step," snaps the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry up, race along, rest when you die ! " 

He maddens in the breathless race, 

Nor misses station, power, or pelf; 
And only loses in the chase 

The hunted lord of all, — himself. 
His gain is loss, 
His treasure dross. 
"Step, step, step," mocks the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry up, limp along, rest when you die ! " 

With care he burthens all his soul ; 

Heaped ingots curve his willing back ; 
Submissive to that fierce control, 

He needs at last the sky-whip's crack. 

22 



172 FRESH LEAVES. 



Till at the grave, 

No more a slave, — 
" Rest, rest, rest," sighs the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry not, haste no more, rest when you die ! " 



THE POLARIS. 1 73 



THE POLARIS. 

" God will bring us through." — Journal of Jolm Herron. 

They faced with valiant hearts their fate, 

Exiled upon their raft of ice ; 
Worn, famished, drenched, and desolate ; 

Friendless beneath the Polar skies. 

They did not murmur ; silently 

Their eyes unquailing saw their doom ; 

To fight, to fail, to waste, and die, 

The black, cold wave their nameless tomb. 

While we on beds of softness lie, 

They sleepless stand through nights of fear, 
Pierced by the needles of the sky, 

And visited by visions drear. 



174 FRESH LEAVES. 

Wolf-like the winds howl fierce and grim ; 

The hungry seas, more wolf-like still, 
Snatch at their floe's diminished rim, 

And at their feet their torrents spill. 

The giant berg above them shone 

With nodding towers which spectral gleam ; 

Round it the surges toss and moan, 
And o'er it wild fowl soar and scream. 

Breast close to manly breast, like rocks, 
They stand impatient for the day, 

Endure the billows' cruel shocks, 

Ice-mailed in clouds of freezing spray. 

The dumb, white terror of the snow, 
The wheeling gulls, but answer give, 

And thunder of the rending floe, 
To every prayer, but still they live. 

Their cry of faith, — was it unheard? 

Far hid in light, One heard and knew : 
To Him soared bird-like the true word, — 

"God sees us, He will bring us through." 



THE POLARIS. 175 

Gently His finger drew them on 

To where His creatures gave them food, 

And softer suns upon them shone, 
And lo ! two ships before them stood. 

Their faith the mountains did remove, 

And bore far off each icy crest, 
And now they bask in rays of love : 

" He giveth His beloved rest." 



176 FRESH LEAVES. 



DIANA OF GABII. 

In dear old days, from bounteous Earth, 
Like Pallas from the brain of Jove, 

Sprang Art and Beauty, a twin birth, 
For man it bore so much of love. 

An Attic sculptor fain would mould 
Artemis, goddess fair and chaste, 

Quivered, succinct, in beauty cold, 

Such as through Latmian wilds she chased. 

He sought her image in his soul 

Glassed, when the Ideal, swift to fly, 

Something revealed, but not the whole ; 
Then left him for its native sky. 

He sought her where the silvered rill 
Caught wavering glimpses of her face ; 

In lakes with breathless midnight still, 
Holding full-orbed each virgin grace. 



DIANA OF GAB 'II. IJJ 

And when with dewy, buskined feet 

She tridded at the twilight glow 
The forest paths, with radiance fleet, 

And glimmer of her crescent bow ; 

And when her vanishing gleam his quest 
Evaded, as through clouds she flies, 

Pursuing with divine unrest 

Her shining quarry of the skies, — 

The sculptor sighed, with lifted hand : 

When lo ! beyond his open door, 
A young and joyous maiden band 

Delay, — a shadow strikes his floor. 

Dear heart of plain Humanity ! 

His dream has shrunk to one fair maid, 
And human grace itself shall see 

By Immortality repaid. 

In thousand Christian homes the guest, 
Of marble, ivory, bronze, and gold, 

And still that- maid adjusts her vest, 
As in Greek sunshine once of old. 



^_^^_i 



178 FRESH LEAVES. 



THE BOWLING GREEN, NEW YORK. 

Is this the Bowling Green? I should not know it, 
So disarrayed, defaced, and gone to seed, 

Like some un-Pegasused and prosy poet, 
Whose Helicon is now the bowl and weed ; 

Its Green, if grass, does not preciseby show it, 
So changed to worse from that once lovely mead. 

Not Time has done it only, Desecration 

Has with corrosive finger touched the place : 

The iron fence, its once proud decoration, 

The street, the mansions round, share the dis- 
grace, — 

Now but the stepping-stone of every nation, 
The point of fusion for the human race. 

The houses once, long since, in evening's glory 
Shone with a tranquil beauty ; and on stoops 

Maidens would listen while the old, old story 
Beguiled the twilight ; and broad-skirted groups 

Displayed their sabres moderately gory, 

Displacing with good Dutch the Indians' whoops. 



THE BOWLING GREEN, NEW YORK. 1 79 

And in my own day, later, I remember 

Those pleasant houses and their pleasant hosts, 

Where gleamed like topaz in the dying ember 
The old Madeira (then we drank to toasts). 

Ah me ! that June of life is now December, 
And all those smiling figures are but ghosts. 



Yon dingy alien, limping from his steamer ; 

The colorless, abandoned look of all ; 
The broken flags, the fountain's silvery tremor ; 

The homes disprivacied for ever, and the wall 
Cuirassed in gilded sign-boards, — pain the dreamer, 

And all his blissful memories appall. 



Ah ! 'twas a dear old town, that lost Manhattan, 
With its green shores, whose islands still had 
trees ; 
And round them gleamed the sun-touched Bay like 
satin, 
When the sun sank, and shut its wings the breeze. 
Oh ! why was it obliged to gi - ow and fatten ? 
Those modest days in worth outvalued these. 

23 ' 



l8o FRESH LEAVES. 

The visitor, I may say without flattery, 
Finds few, if any, ports to match the view 

(When the wind 's up, the walk is slightly spattery) 
Of bustling, white-winged craft and laughing 
blue, 

Which fixes him enchanted on the Battery, — 
So full of life it is, for ever fresh and new. 

If as a boy I did, I make my haunt in 
Dear Castle Garden, soon I find a check 

In two policemen, who, my courage daunting, 
Stand sentinels beside that piteous wreck, 

And point to signs, I read, jfttr ISmt'rjranten, 
And just beyond I see an emptying deck. 

In the far future, haply, the town completed, 

That foreign wave no more shall strike the shore, 

And the boys then shall frolic there as we did, 
And maidens flower-like bloom beside the door, 

And happy people shall behold repeated 
Such a Manhattan as we loved of yore. 



THE BLACKBERRY-BOY. l8l 



THE BLACKBERRY-BOY. 

A country lad encountering me, 
Under the glow of summer skies, 

Said with a soft voice, timidly, 

"Please buy my lot of blackberries?" 

A basket full, — fit frame for them, 
So rustic, cheaply made and slight ; 

Each swarthy circle held a gem, 

Touched with one little point of light. 

His cheek, — you see it in the leaf 
Which August into russet brands, 

His locks remind you of the sheaf 
Ceres lifts high in glowing hands. 

His eyes are like two forest pools, 

Where come and go all creatures wild ; 

And nature's secret hints and rules 
Ensnare in that unconscious child. 



182 FRESH LEAVES. 

I tried a berry : it was good. 

The tingling pleasure gave my sense 
Flight to some boyish solitude, 

In gypsy days of indolence. 

The lusty Summer's store of heats, 
Its spoil and wealth of fervid days, 

Mix acid with o'ermastering sweets, 

Round which the enamoured lip delays. 

The blue jay, bluer than the sky, 

Mulleins which hang their woolly leaves, 

The saucy brook which flirted by, 
Each something in the berry weaves. 

I taste the passion, the repose, 

The sunshine captured from the air, 

And all the telltale Summer glows 
In every drop imprisoned there. 

Recovered from my flight, I find 
My boy, and think how well agree 

(So Gainsborough rural of its kind !) 
The basket, blackberries, and he. 



ASHES. 183 



ASHES. 

Fair, flaunting buds, which'haste to dress 

Their boughs in fruit of splendor, 
Whose gold and crimson bosoms press 

Towards us in surrrender, — 
Ah ! from their glamour turn the eye, 

As in the light it flashes, 
This beauty is but born to die, 

Its heart is dust and ashes. 

Some seeds of earth shall tower sublime, 

Where suns not ours shall quicken, 
When found at last their native clime, 

For here they fail and sicken ; 
And some which burgeon broad and high, 

Their odorous clusters wearing, 
Dishonored in the dust shall lie, 

While we look on despairing. 



184 FRESH LEAVES. 

The pride which starves the soul to feed 

The love of self; the fever 
Which eats into the heart of Greed ; 

The lie which deceives the deceiver ; 
The night-shade berries o'er the brow 

Of Hate ; the brood of Follies, — 
Celestial life shall disavow, 

Ashes and dust our solace. 



The prosperous wrong whose blood is drawn 

From life which is another's, 
And from its dangerous height looks scorn 

Down on our humbler brothers, 
Like evening's cloud of gilded air, 

He sees his treasure flying, 
And grasps, with penitential stare, 

But fairy gold when dying. 



Eyes which from eyes drink lethal wine, 
White limbs which twine and glisten, 

And find no Freedom so divine 
As Love's delicious prison, — 



ASHES. 1 8 

Flushed passion-flowers whose glow deceives, 

Set deep in soil of sorrow, 
The dust shall kiss your shining leaves, 

Fled, dead, ere come the morrow ! 

The vintage which Silenus loves, 

Where Friendship's voice is hollow, 
And Cyprus sends her sullied doves, 

And all the Satyrs follow, — 
Your Dead Sea fruit shall plangent roll, 

And winds shall wail your dirges, 
When salt as tears, o'er each lost soul, 

Sweep the avenging surges. 

Truth, Goodness, Love, immortal Three, 

Though Earth their roots may cherish, 
Lift radiant to Eternity 

The fruits which cannot perish : 
Around them breathe ambrosial calms, 

And, o'er their raiment twining, 
Seraphs shall bear them in their arms, 

Where God their Sun is shining. 



3 



1 86 FRESH LEAVES. 



TO-MORROW. 

Mirage from Life's desert forsaken, 
Ever painting with purple the air ; 

Time's vanguard by none overtaken, 
We touch thee, but thou art not there ! 

Thy Parthian glances discover 
The world, in its eddy and flow 

Pursue thee, as loved one the lover, 
And yet thou may'st prove thee a foe. 

To-morrow we win Fortune's prizes, 

To-morrow on roses we lie, 
To-morrow shall see when it rises 

The Earth at our feet, and we cry, — 

"Be but ours, and we ever will bless thee, 
Ours, ours till the setting of sun ; 

To honor and keep and caress thee, 
Thou only, thou excellent one ! 



TO-MORROW. 187 

"A monarch thou shalt be, and royal ; 

And we will be all that we should, 
To the soul and its utterance loyal, 

And true to our instincts of good." 

Thou fleetest on gauzy wing flying, 
Yet we half see the smile on thy face ; 

For a smile it is all thy replying, 

And our arms but enfold empty space. 

A phantom before us thou flyest, 

Atalanta-like into thy cloud ; 
Not ours when we thought thee the nighest, 

Deep hid in to-night as a shroud. 

Thou art silent, perchance it is pity 
Which closes so mutely thy lips : 

The morn which saw burning our city, 
Foreknowledge should kindly eclipse. 

We fear thee, thou tyrannous master, 
And our love it may yet turn to tears, 

As with banners of Death and Disaster 
To-morrow in terror appears. 

24 



188 FRESH LEAVES. 

The sun may behold from his station 
The end and defeat of our chase, 

When the trumpet shall sound to creation 
The doom of the latest of days. 



PLACES. 189 



PLACES. 

In the heart's album there are treasured faces, 
Our household darlings, friends which are our 
own ; 

And with them favorite haunts and cherished places, 
So dear, they seem but made for us alone. 

Old age remembers over misty distance 

The brook the boy once loved ; its scent of 
flowers 

Comes wafted from it yet with sweet persistence, 
And builds again for him those vanished hours. 

He feels once more his bare feet in the stubble, 
His jointed fishing-rod, his bat and ball, 

Till, flown from dreary days and thoughts of trouble, 
His pulses still sing music through it all. 



19° FRESH LEAVES. 

Later, the seashore, haunt of vague emotion, 

Where his thoughts travelled on the gleaming 
wave, 

Or rose in flowering hopes, as smitten ocean 
Shot jets of thundrous splendor round his cave. 

The sacred path, which two once trod enchanted 
And now but one, and he with faltering tread, 

Feeling its grassy curves and hollows haunted 
By watching eyes, whose light is with the dead. f 

Then there are favorite nooks of early travel, 
When, dreaming idly on the summer grass, 

He saw the Swiss cascades their threads unravel, 
And evening strike above the shadowy pass. 

Clitumnus' oxen wander by the plashing 
Of Virgil's lovely fountain ; and the bees 

Pillage the heavy flowers in sunlight flashing, 
While the doves murmur from the ilex-trees. 

Here Como's nightingale above the rowing 
Sings his lament: and, doubled in the lake, 

He sees himself and boat, and, softly showing, 
The clouds and distant hills a picture make. 



PLACES. 191 

Sorrento hangs there, crowned in memory's vision. 
Starry with clustered orange, and below 

An azure dream-world, soft with indecision, 
Where dulse and tangle round mosaics grow. 

Such is the album memory fills with treasures, 
Hid in the heart, where love doth keep the key ; 

There in procession pass life's pains and pleasures, 
Fresh and undying till it cease to be. 



192 FRESH LEAVES. 



SEA-TANGLE. 

" Go show to earth your power ! " the East Wind 
cried 

Commanding ; and the swift, submissive seas, 
In ordered files, like liquid mountains, glide, 

Moving from sky to sky with godlike ease. 

Its march sublime was as a lifting world 

Subsiding into glassy valleys vast : 
No crest of foam upon its brow was curled ; 

But silent, dark, and terrible, it passed. 

Below a cliff, where mused a little maid, 

It struck. Its voice in thunder cried, " Beware ! " 

But, to delight her, instantly displayed 

A fount of showering diamonds in the air. 

" Go, cruel thing ! " she said, "unloved by me ; 

Go, tear the sailor from his happy sleep ; 
Drown navies in thy heartless perfidy ; 

But spare our flowers, thou monster of the deep !" 



SEA-TANGLE. 1 93 

As in obedience, the wave passed on, 

Touching each shore with silver-sandalled feet, 

But tossed, in flying, in the sun which shone, 
A handful to her lap of sea-blooms sweet. 

More delicate than forms the frost doth weave 
On window-panes, are Ocean's filmy brood ; 

Remembering the awful home they leave, 
Their hues to that dim under-world subdued. 

Fair spread on pages white, I saw arrayed 
These fairy-children of a sire so stern : 

Their beauty charmed me ; while the little maid 
Spoke of her new-found love with cheeks which 
burn, — 

" So grand, so terrible, how could I know 

He cared for these?" she faltered, — "darlings 
dear ! 

That his great heart could nurture them, and glow 
With such a love beneath such look severe?" 

Like God, the Ocean, too, the least can heed, 
Yearn in a moon-led quest to farthest shores, 

And fondle in delight its smallest weed, 
Yet look to Him it mirrors and adores. 



194 FRESH LEAVES. 



PENEKESE. 

Not vainly Homer saw it in a dream, 

Circling the world and bounding continents ; 

Our shore is girdled by an Ocean Stream, 

Which nearest to the Vineyard Sound indents. 

There fringing the azure deep are happy isles, 
Which swim in warmth of Equatorial seas, 

And gladden in the gracious Summer's smiles, — 
The smallest, nearest to us is Penekese. 

A string of pearls they lie on Ocean's breast, 
Steeped in a languor brought them from afar, 

And drowse through summer days in silent rest, 
Kissed by mild waves and loved of moon and 
star. 

Once the shy Indian saw his shadow shake 
Across the wave, as he withdrew his spear 

From the struck bass, or heard within the brake 
The tender grass, torn by the feeding deer. 



PENEKESE. 19S 

Those dumb, waste centuries of loss are o'er, 
A better, nobler day to them succeeds : 

Now Science rears her watch-tower by the shore, 
Round it are scholars whom a teacher leads. 

The light within the watch-tower is his mind, 
Cosmic, with forms of life which end in man ; 

There all the tribes their place in order find, 
As if he read the thought of God's own plan. 

As Aristotle moved among his youth 

Upon the shores of sea-beat Attica, 
Firing their souls with reverence for truth : 

So midst his thronging scholars moveth he. 

Oh ! happy ones who read the book of life, 
Till ye through him in wisdom daily grow, 

To find how far above Earth's barren strife 
Is the soul's hunger (toil divine) to know. 

What pastoral lives of true simplicity ! 

Plain living and high thinking, with the bond 
Between them of a lofty sympathy, 

Whose circlet rings this world and worlds beyond. 

25 



196 FRESH LEAVES. 

Hail ! generous heart which gave its home of years ! 

Hail, too, ye youth who lean on such a guide ! 
Long may the shrine which now glad Science rears 

Shine like a load-star o'er the waters wide. 



TWO CHARACTERS. 1 97 



TWO CHARACTERS. 



Twin drops together fall from heaven, 
And strike upon a farmer's roof; 
Sundering they run, till one, aloof, 
To the Atlantic deep is given : 

And one to the Pacific rolls. 

So to a far and alien sky, 

Two infants from one cradle fly, 

With different birth-mark on their souls. 



i. 

We meet him ; in his cordial look 
We see and feel a new sun rise, 
Which sends an added glow to skies 
Whence sorrow half the splendor took. 



198 FRESH LEAVES. 

The cloud-racks hold a brighter gold, 
New perfume wings the blithesome breeze ; 
And even in blackest clouds, he sees 
The lining which they shall unfold. 

As turns the sunflower to her god, 
Our spirit in his smile expands, 
And loosens round it all the bands 
Which held us captive to the sod. 

Our better angel seems to plead 
For virtues wintry skies had sealed ; 
The violet goodness stands revealed, 
Which thought itself a common weed. 

He puts a life in every thing, — 
In Hope, in Faith, and last in us ; 
And glittering in the sky we swing 
The sword he makes victorious. 

11. 

The other's eye diminishes 
The world, which it can darken too : 
Less sweet the heaven's discouraged blue, 
And shadow all around us lies. 



TWO CHARACTERS. 1 99 

His owl-like wish proclaims the night, 
Even where the Imperial splendor smiles. 
His look the innocent joy defiles, 
Which blackens in untimely blight. 

He sees this world a whistling ball, 
Sent spinning on through cheerless space ; 
And life to man, an empty chase 
For doubtful good, if good at all. 

His supine spirit shames the brutes, 
Who circle grateful through their days. 
His eye on mirth can look disgrace, 
And make the evil it imputes. 

There sits an ever-mocking sprite, 
Whose swiftest comment is dispraise ; 
Who by a glance the heart betrays, 
And sullies with a stain the light. 

He dwarfs this fair romantic earth 
To a shop-counter, where the wares 
Enchantment offers lose their worth, 
And gloom and spleen see gaining theirs. 



200 FRESH LEAVES. 

How through his talk the fluffy air 
Thickens, where spindles ring in rows ; 
The belted wheel, which near him glows, 
Is scarce of vital warmth more bare. 

We hear the hum of swarming towns ; 
Crash through their streets the iron trains ! 
What matter ! wood or metal gains 
If he his youthful dreams renounce. 



God help them both ! Impartial Love 
Shall couch the blindness, nor condemn 
The faulty eye : for both of them 
One perfect sight in realms above. 



ENGLISH SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 201 



AN ENGLISH SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 



Something says this is Sunday. Hangs in air 
A quiet and contrition as of prayer. 
The weary clouds no longer hunted fly, 
But white and close as choristers they lie. 
The goodly time deepens each choral note 
Of birds whose hymn-like songs to Heaven float. 
Is it a fancy, or is God more near? 
He looks forgiveness from yon azure clear. 
Earth worships, and, pavilioned in the light, 
Man's spirit soars where only Faith hath sight. 
In decent garb by hedge-rows go the hinds, 
With grateful looks, and calm if clouded minds : 
They, beyond all, see Heaven a day of rest, 
When happy farmers wear their Sunday best, — 
This gives the day a deeper meaning here, — 
All through the week, yoke-fellow with the steer 



202 FRESH LEAVES. 

See, where through playing shadows proudly glows, 
Under her hat, the belle and village rose. 
Down to the daisies falls her Sabbath look, 
While hands unconscious hold her service book. 
Round her coquetting loves demurely fly, 
Or peep from the soft ambush of her eye ; 
They smooth the undulations of her dress, 
And draw that ribbon round to closer press. 

Washed with this dewy sky, yon ruins soar, 

With a bleak majesty we know no more. 

Where walls like precipices, here and there, 

At little windows show that life was there : 

Man's cuirassed home, himself in armor dressed, 

How all relieves against this Sunday rest ! 

In vain the magic of a poet's pen 

Would clothe with glamour those harsh days again. 

In vain the press of knights would Ivanhoe 

Ride down,. we watching, as in dreams, the blow. 

Cruelty, wrong, the scanty meal and poor, 

The hand of iron which wan serfs endure, 

The road unsafe, the mutual fear and hate, 

The huddled poor below, above the lords of Fate, — 



ENGLISH SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 203 

These, and not fluttering scarfs and ladies' smiles 
In Tournament, alone, beheld these Isles. 
Wrong, like a sword, an angel sheathes, and shows 
Where the meek Sufferer bleeds among his foes ; 
His humble tower rebukes the castle's pride, 
And lo ! it crumbles which had kings defied ; 
For violence but lives its little day, 
But Love and Reverence survive decay. 

ASHBY DE LA ZOUCH. 1S44. 



26 



204 FRESH LEAVES. 



AN OCTOBER DAY. 

O day divine, — Time's Benjamin, — last born, 

Lift us to thee ! 
Shower o'er us all thy rose-leaves of the morn, 

Unsparingly ! 

A thousand years contributed to build 

Thy loveliness, 
Their slow, consenting excellence distilled 

For us in this. 

This is the day our prophesying soul 

Saw from afar, 
The mark of all the flying hours, their goal 

And Avatar. 

The cordial air is wine and myrrh to taste ; 

On it we float, 
As swam Osiris o'er his watery waste, 

In mystic boat. 



AN OCTOBER DAY. 205 

The spirit of the mountain and the plain 

Wanders through us ; 
And the pine's balsam drops invisible rain, 

And odorous. 

Why should we speak? What need of any word, 

When we divine 
A happiness so deep its voice unheard 

Says thine is mine? 

The needles of the pines we glide along, 

Soundless we press ; 
The sunshine sings as never bird of song 

In wilderness. 

Like scattering shadows vanishes each fear. 

The imperial joy 
Melts into brightness every image drear 

Of past annoy. 

Thus shall it be hereafter, when we are 

A sensuous soul ; 
Dilating, trembling on from star to star, 

Part, yet the whole ; 



206 FRESH LEAVES. 

When God's love shall float over us and through, 

As the Medusa lies 
With interpenetration of the blue 

Of sea and skies. 

Then life is bliss, is rapture, and is prayer : 

Silence a hymn ; 
Lying entranced, with all our being bare 

And lost in Him. 

North Conway, October, 1873. 



THE BOSTON BOOBY-HUT. 207 



THE BOSTON BOOBY-HUT. 

Between the forest and the sea, 
On gentle eminences three, 
The Puritan had built a town, 
And with his Bible sat him down. 
All was of wood, — the wooden age, 
It may be called, our earliest stage : 
Here as in Europe there were once 
Ages of iron, stone, and bronze. 

How hard, in our soft modern days, 
To see their grim, ascetic ways ! 
When it was worth a fellow's life 
To kiss on Sunday his own wife ; 
And, at the least, they had him fined, 
If he had indiscreetly dined. 
To travel was a stratagem ; 
For roads or turnpikes, had they them? 
At last a few were faintly sketched, 
Painfully, as on a steel plate etched. 



208 FRESH LEAVES. 

Just fancy it ! Beneath our nose 
The conjuror's steel ribbon flows, 
And steam's bow shoots us far away, 
Like arrows, to the gates of day ; 
And nerves, as in some Kraken vast, 
Through all the living land are passed. 
Pinch Frisco, and it touches us ; 
Hurt us, and Frisco makes a fuss. 
As we in safety carve our heath-hen, 
Think of them carved themselves by Heathen ; 
Their duty as Christians to belabor 
And tomahawk their first red neighbor. 
Summer was rough and bad enough, 
But in the winter it was tough. 
Under their coverlets of white, 
The little flowers had said " Good-night." 
Bolted and fine, the heavenly meal 
Fell till no horse could pull a wheel : 
In stealthy Indian files the snow 
Captured and bound all things below. 
Shut in their homes, the Pilgrims stayed, 
And thought of England, preached and prayed ; 
Yet sometimes ventured on a ride, 
Or drive a little way outside. 



THE BOSTON BOOBY-HUT. 209 

Winter was tough, the snow came down 
All white, — with one dark spot, the town 
Called Shawmut ; but, preferring rather 
To honor godly Cotton Mather, 
They called it Boston, to make known 
St. Botolph had to Mather grown. 

Winter was tough, but one smart fellow 
Imprisonment was turning yellow 
Would have a drive, and his strong will 
Stood to him in the place of skill. 
He was a Lincolnshire man, — austere 
With living on those levels drear, 
Where the sluiced, water-checkered plain 
Feels breath and memory of the main, 
And like some sloop's mast, huge and high, 
" Boston stump " penetrates the sky. 

He would ride as in Lincolnshire : 
The way he managed it was queer. 
Divorcing, as an illegal marriage, 
The wheels from body of his carriage, 
He placed on the body's under side 
Two runners, reasonably wide, 
Leaving the springs ; and soon he found 
Snow served him as did solid ground. 



2IO FRESH LEAVES. 

High perched in state, and proud no end, 

He slid off, and soon met a friend, — 

A man from Suffolk, where remain 

Words left by Angle and by Dane ; 

And startled, as he saw approach 

This hybrid monster of a coach, 

Cried, " Deacon, what is it thou hast there? 

A Booby Hutch, as I declare ! " 

The booby thought it a good name, 

And called it so, — we do the same. 

Long may it live, well cushioned, low, 
Cosey, and comfortably slow ; 
With drowsy bells, which to us seem 
Part of some after-dinner dream, 
While dozing in its ample arms, 
Unconscious of the " thank-y-marms." 

Long as our country's banner glows, 
Star-crowned with evening's stripes of rose ; 
Long as our wise men feel increased 
Their smartness when the wind blows East ; 
Long' as an alderman shall find 
A tree the enemy of mankind, 
And civic rage shall overwhelm 
With taunts each violated elm ; 



THE BOSTON BOOBY-HUT 211 

Long as its own our Common hold, 
Noi" see the encroaching scissors cold 
Clip its green carpet, trim its edge, 
With cheerful, official sacrilege ; 
Long as the Sapphos of the Hub 
Convene their Tenth-day Ladies' Club, 
Nor to the men its entrance shut, — 
So long live Boston's Booby-hut. 



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MAY 15 



MAY U 1906 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

015 785 320 




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